Tuesday, May 26, 2009

There has been a lot of coverage lately about applications used to cheat at WAR. These technical-based attacks are just one form of cheating that plague the game. Recently, I was introduced to another form of cheating which was much more devastating than a movement bug.

On Saturday night, all was well on the Badlands server for Order. We were making a good push and were in Black Crag and Chaos Wastes. Cooperation was high, as we were attempting to lock down CW. With only a couple minutes left on the final keep, it suddenly reset back to 2 hours.

The guild which occupied the keep had relinquished their claim just before we locked the zone. That is a very odd thing to do. More investigation showed that it was a very small guild made up of low ranked players.

Seems very likely this was an alt guild of Destruction who were either cross realming or working with the Destruction on our sever. It could also be it was some griefers on our own side, we may never know.

Overall the tactic worked well for Destruction. Once the keep was reset over 70 of them flooded the zone from the fortress and pretty much ended Orders advance for the night. For me personally it was very deflating. I don't mind losing, but not to cheaters. Out of disgust I ended up just logging off for the night.

The guild responsible was reported but it is unsure whether or not Mythic will act. One fix that should be made is you should be of the correct rank for a tier to claim a keep in that tier. That would at least force would-be cheaters into leveling up a character first.

Lastly, I doubt much of Destruction was in on this and I'm sure they were quite surprised to see the keep reset. Hopefully this kind of abuse ends, as it will just ruin the enjoyment of the game for both sides.

Pshh, I've seen fully ranked guild reclaim keeps to stop an advance to a fortress before because the leader of said guild didn't "feel" like we had enough bloodthirsty invaders chomping at the bit for a fight.

It's not just cheaters, there's also stupid to consider. People are allowed to be stupid.

It happens. Guilds brag about not having guild taxes, but than when its time to upgrade, upgrade, upgrade they claim a keep, and run out of money. I think you are going to have a hard time proving it was done to cheat.

I suggest re-rolling to Dark Crag. Our keep timers rarely go below an hour before locking with all the skirmish, pve, scenarios, and prior tier happening all the time.

Mythic does need to think of a better way of deciding who can claim a keep, but I can't say exactly how.

I have never seen a bullet-proof system that doesn't severely limit the options people can have.

I know there are a few guilds who are actually so repulsed by the current zone pushing that they will un-claim a keep to prevent zone lock, so it may not always be a "spy guild". Should you really prevent this kind of thing?